Ravelle

Pillay:

Idyl

in

Studio

International

Ravelle Pillay’s paintings carry a quiet, almost dreamlike quality, yet beneath their soft washes of colour, a deeper tension emerges. Figures in her compositions pose in the ranked format of group photographs, rendered in an overexposed monochrome that glimmers with the passing of time. On first glance, we know that The Instruction (A gathering of friends) (2022) is a painting about history, the essence of which is carried in its reference to the documentary medium of photography, while its washed-out quality is also suggestive of memory. The figures oscillate between distance and proximity. Some are unnaturally small or large, isolated as well as unified with the others.

Pillay's paintings are based on images found in personal and colonial archives. The Johannesburg-based artist descends from Indian workers who came to South Africa during the period of indenture, when millions migrated from India to the European colonies to fill labour shortages that resulted from the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. This system of contracted servitude was very much abused, despite the declared freedom of the labourers, leading to a definitive ban on the British empire’s use of it in the 1920s.